We got back from Australia on Wednesday and let me say right off the that bat that we only took six pictures because we suck and also I think Mr. E may have dropped the camera half way through the trip. It was a very interesting trip – one thing you might not know about me is that I like to have a lot of space between international travel because what happens is that it turns out that I don’t really like international travel so usually trips to places like Mexico or France start out with me sitting on a plane thinking “Fuck! I hate travel. Why am I doing this?” and then I spend the next 14 days hyperventilating about how I don’t understand one damn word anyone is saying to me and how I just want to be able to order a hamburger on a bun from the children’s menu and why does everyone in this country smoke so much? So it takes like three years for me to forget how much I hate international travel and this is why I space things like this out. Because I hate everything.

Anyway.

I will say that I did enjoy myself – mostly because Australia is pretty much like visiting LA or America. They have seven dollar lattes, yes, and some weird candy in the grocery store, but mostly everyone knows what you are saying when you ask for ketchup for your fries and it makes a nervous traveler such as myself feel right at home. However I would like to recommend not traveling anywhere farther than your local McDonald’s Play Land when you are six or eight weeks pregnant since one day long ago I decided to go to France when I was six weeks pregnant with Eli and then just now to go to Australia when I was eight weeks pregnant with Noodle Number Two and both of these rotten decisions culminated with me hunched over an airsick bag moaning Hail Marys in my head as I tried not to lose my lunch on the tarmac at LAX. I will forever consider the breakfast served to me by Delta Airlines on my return flight from Australia to be one of the great atrocities prepetrated on me – and all of humanity – for all of time. When the customs man asked me if I had any airline food with me I jauntily replied “Oh, no, I am 100% certain I left ALL my food on that plane” and luckily Mr. E hauled me away from that interaction before I had to time to get “FOR SURE HAS SWINE FLU” stamped on my forehead by the US Department of Homeland Security. Nevertheless it should be noted that after I tossed ALL my chunks at the end of that first flight, my wise and understanding husband elected to bypass the next plane to Salt Lake City and the plane after that to San Francisco and the BART ride to Oakland and the car ride to San Francisco and we rented a car and drove for five and half and hours and then voila we were home and my babyeeeeee was burying his little blond head in my neck and then god laughed and turned the morning sickness up another two notches.

One final word regarding travel and pregnancy – and don’t say I never give you any free advice – because here it is, my best piece of advice of all time. For the love of god, for all that is holy and right with the world, don’t get yourself good and knocked up and travel to a country which routinely serves people BAKED BEANS FOR BREAKFAST. Gag.

After we got back from Australia I had to go have a quicky ultrasound on FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH because my OB decided that right after she noted in my chart that I am on ANTI ANXIETY MEDICINE WHICH I TAKE FOR ANXIETY that she would look for the baby and then she would not find the baby and then she would decide to tell me that she could only see the heartbeat but no baby so maybe my dates were off by a few days or ELSE there was no baby and or if there was a baby the baby would die and I would have a miscarriage in Australia but not to worry because she’s never heard anything bad about their medical care down there hardly ever! Fun!

Also adding to the fun was the fact that I had to give a urine sample during that visit and after I did my business I flushed the toilet and Eli was in the bathroom with me and due to the fact that the toilet flush at the doctor’s office is the loudest toilet flush in the history of known time, he burst into hysterical tears. Then when the nurse was done dicking around with my urine, she gave it back to me to flush down the toilet. I couldn’t hold the worlds heaviest bathroom door open AND flush the worlds loudest toilet at the same timea, so Eli was once again trapped in the bathroom with me, and at the sound of the worlds loudest toilet flushing for the SECOND time, he LOST HIS MIND. The nurse opened the worlds heaviest door to see who was killing a toddler in the bathroom and smacked it right into Eli’s head. So by the time we headed in for the physical exam where the doctor was ready to give me a big list of things to be anxious about, Eli was in a sad state, alternating between silent tears and moaning “I want mommy,” and the only thing that would shut him up was a Dr. Pepper Lip Smacker I had in my purse. He sat next to me, smearing lip smacker across his forehead and into his cheeks and into his chin as he moaned and clutched my hand – I was lying next to him on the exam table half naked with my cha cha up in the air – and this was when they decided to tell me that they saw “No baby!” but Not To Worry I could just probably have a miscarriage in Australia! With their excellent medical care!” On the bright side, the thick coating of Lip Smacker covering Eli repelled tears like water off a ducks back. And he smelled really great for the rest of the day. Just like Dr. Pepper!

Needless to say I am still sick as a dog and we had an ultrasound on Friday THE THIRTEENTH and holy smokes, there’s a BABY in there you guys. With legs and feet and TINY TOES. It is the strangest thing on earth – I am so sick all the time but it never feels like it’s because I am having a BABY. And yet, there it was, noodley as could be.

The morning sickness totally pisses me off – I feel like gak every minute of the day and all I can do is feebly try to calculate when it may have ended or abated or tapered off or quit RUINING MY LIFE the first time around but as best I can tell I think I have like, four more weeks of this, at least, and when I think about that I want to die, and it just pisses me off, I feel like it’s stealing all the stuff I love to do and it’s stealing months of Eli’s life and it got Halloween – we didn’t go to the pumpkin patch and Eli wore his Batman pajamas instead of a real costume and he couldn’t even carve a pumpkin because the one we got him from thhe cardboard bin at the grocery store was half rotten. The morning sickness stole Halloween and it makes me mad and it makes me feel guilty and so now I am concentrating all my might on not letting it steal Thanksgiving. As god is my witness I will make that GODDAMNED burlap table runner or else! But I’m not gonna lie, I think about stuffing and I kind of want to slit my wrists.

13 Responses

Oh effing hell, you mean going through all that was actually WORTH something? I hardly want to believe that’s true, because then I wouldn’t be able to hold it over his head anymore. At least I still have the 20 hours of labor and the raising his elbow on the way out!

For fuck’s sake, when are you going to schedule an appointment so I can WATCH YOUR KID SO NO ONE IS TRAUMATIZED.

Seriously. I can be in Sac by 4-ish any days but Tuesday or Wednesday. Please heed this information while scheduling, because I a) adore you and want you to have okay appointments and b) am in love with your child.

OMG. This is simultaneously so horrible I want to report some sort of medical malpractice (“Toilet volume violated Hippocratic Oath”) and so funny I am going to barf up my dinner. Speaking of which, you have my FULL SYMPATHY on pregnancy nausea. My friend Tiffany said it best, I think, when she said she spent three months wishing an anvil would fall on her head.

I for some reason was really floored by them making you flush your own pee down the toilet. That is sooooo in the nurse’s job description. And anyone reading this should not get snatchy with me because I AM a nurse so I CAN say this.

I have similar thoughts about international travel. I get excited and then I get there and I’m so annoyed that it’s not America. Only places with beaches get a pass in my book.

And I cannot believe they make you flush your urine sample. I just put it in the stainless door (where they had a picture of McDreamy taped up) and I never saw it again. GAH. Who passes around URINE like it’s a cocktail?

I’m with Swistle. This is all awful, and I’m agog with sympathy for you, because I have been there, sister. With my first, I had “morning” sickness all day and all night for the entire nine months. I woke up almost every night at 3 am and if I was too hot, I barfed. I started keeping the house so cold at night that my husband slept in long johns. The day before she was born, I threw up and then backed into the corner of the trim around the bathtub and cut my tailbone, so I had that lovely wound to take with me to the hospital.

However, I totally laughed my way through this post. Eli screaming about the toilet! The nurse hitting him in the head with the door! (What a moron! The nurse, of course, not Eli.) Complete comedy of errors.